marcicat | TRON primer (Reply)

(aka ‘what I remember from watching it this summer’)

A couple people have told me that the new Tron movie makes more sense if you’ve seen the first one. Hey, I have! (Mostly because the wikipedia entry was really confusing to me.) But it was back in the summer, and starandrea’s never seen it, and we’re going tomorrow to see Tron Legacy, so I thought I’d better recap it for us.

What Happened In The First Tron Movie (as recalled by me)

1. [BACKSTORY] So there’s Kevin Flynn (that’s Jeff Bridges, he’s the old guy in the new movie — Sam’s missing dad). He used to work for the computer company Encom, where he was awesome at everything and created a super popular video game. Then the bad guy (wikipedia says his name was Dillinger) stole his work, got promoted to CEO, and got Kevin fired.

2. Kevin keeps trying to hack the Encom systems using his program (Clu) to find evidence of Dillinger’s theft. Dillinger’s only vaguely in control of the AI ‘Master Control Program,’ who dislikes hacking and starts locking down peoples’ security clearances. The MCP also destroys the Clu program, though not Clu’s tiny buddy Bit.

3. Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner, he was John Sheridan in Babylon 5) and his girlfriend Laura Baines are very chummy with Flynn, and go visit him at his arcade to say ‘why are you taking your shirt off?’ Then they agree to sneak into the Encom building to give him direct access to the computer.

4. The MCP figures out what’s going on and digitizes Flynn into the computer system. (NOTE: Time moves differently in the digital world, and the rest of the movie takes place in, like, ten minutes of “real world” time.)

5. The digital!world is inhabited by programs. Alan’s program (Tron), and Laura’s program (Yori, who fans lobbied long and hard to get into T:L, sadly without success) spend the movie flirting with Flynn and each other. All the programs think Flynn is also a program; they are in awe of “users” — users are the creators. The MCP is cutting off access to users — taking over the digital!world by snatching programs from their usual computer spaces and shutting down input/output points.

6. Flynn fights for his digital life using the frisbee and the light-up motorcycle! He joins forces with Tron to get to an I/O point and ultimately destroy the MCP. Flynn has some great lines trying to convince the programs that users have *no idea* what they’re doing (unsurprisingly, they don’t find this reassuring). Kissing occurs, and Flynn sacrifices his program!self, which magically makes him rematerialize in the real world.

7. All the evidence Flynn needs (you know, about the video game idea theft thing) is printing out on his adorably ancient printer when he rematerializes! He and Alan and Laura all joyously hug (more kissing? I think yes).

8. [EPILOGUE] Tying up loose ends: Dillinger’s thefts are revealed and he gets fired; the MCP is gone; Flynn gets re-hired and becomes CEO.

9. For visual reference: the 1982 Tron trailer is surprisingly helpful.

10. For anyone who thought the original Tron was visually interesting but couldn’t track who was who, here’s a fun story: (from wikipedia, of course).

The original script called for “good” programs to be colored yellow and “evil” programs (those loyal to Sark and the MCP) to be colored blue. Partway into production, this coloring scheme was changed to blue for good and red for evil, but some scenes were produced using the original coloring scheme: Clu, who drives a tank, has yellow circuit lines, and all of Sark’s tank commanders are blue (but appear green in some presentations). Also, the light-cycle sequence shows the heroes driving yellow (Flynn), orange (Tron) and red (Ram) cycles, while Sark’s troops drive blue cycles; similarly, Clu’s tank is red, while tanks driven by crews loyal to Sark are blue.

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.